a tale of redemption

[Ferd]

I had a grandfather (my mothers father) who was born in the late 1800’s. He was a rapscallion. In fact that might be the best thing you could say about him. He was a racist too. Not the kind of racist found walking around today, or the thing that some folk get called because they told a stupid unfunny joke about people not of their own race. No I mean the real kind of racist. A KKK card carrying member who would join or start a lynch party just because there was nothing else to do on a Thursday night kind of racist.

He owned restaurants in the south and had black folk work for him. I have no idea why they worked for him. He was mean... when he was being NICE he was mean. When he was drunk he was dangerous. He was drunk a lot. When the rest of the world integrated, black folk still didn’t come to his restaurant. They knew better. He just might kill them. He didn’t call them the “N” word. He used other terms much worse that incorporated the “N” word but clearly made you understand his disdain for that words ability to accurately depict the lowness of the black man in his view. I am told that for a good portion of his life he openly stated and truly believed that “black folk don’t have souls”. THAT kind of racist.

PawPaw had a dog that he trained to attack black people on sight. He thought that was funny.

The interesting thing about this man was at the age of 70 he found Christ in a Pentecostal church. My dad was there and praying with him. Dad said that when he received the Holy Ghost he felt a bolt of electricity hit him. It knocked him back. The other man praying for my grandpa was Kenneth Phillips. KP looked at my dad and asked him “did you feel that”??? Dad was a new convert himself. He was in shock.

PawPaw’s finding Jesus took place just a few years after integration took place in the south and the very next day, an African American gentleman and his family came into Papa’s restaurant. My dad was there, and Dad was going to head papa off at the pass, then serve this family (My dad has never been a racist). He went for Papa, and the old man was walking out looking polished to the T with a towel over his arm and an order pad in his hand! He walked up to this table with these people who had errantly wondered into the clutches of one of the meanest most cantankerous ne’er-do-wells this side of the other side, and in the kindest voice he could muster asked them for their order. He took the order, cooked the order, then with the grace of a French Maitre D served them. Evidently old dogs can change their spots. Even if I do mix my metaphor’s.

I cannot say that my grandfather was cured of all that ailed his mind by his experience with Christ, but I can say for the last decade of his life he tried. The family still wouldn’t let us young ones be alone around him… and for good reason but he tried. At the end of his life, his caretaker was an elderly African American gentleman it was a fitting end I suppose. His was a life miss-spent. Even though I was only 6 when he died, he was a figure larger than life and not in a good way where my family is concerned. God is better than man. Even still there are some of us who live with the legacy and struggle with accepting God accepting a man who was as bad as this.

Im not really sure why im sharing. Be blessed!